If you bear in mind that most of us back then, were using analogue desks, we had to produce tracks where parts avoided each other. in the frequency spectrum. Any call-and-response type thing, would involve making frequency space for each channel, but the call-and-response trick meant one sound/patch didn’t clash as badly with the other if it was in the same frequency range.
On the analogue desks, you were lucky if you had a sweepable mid and even more lucky if you could cut below 75Hz.
It was only when I moved onto a Yamaha 01v, like a lot of others I knew at the time, when things started to get clarity.
Some producers got access to studios, where they could use more complex compression routing etc.
Like I say though - it depends on your genre.
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